


Liar's Chair

by redsunsaint, reyleaux (witchoil)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Feminization, Gaslighting, Gen, Imperial Coronation, Medical Abuse, Naboo - Freeform, Rey as Sir Not Appearing in this Fic, Self-Reclamation as Redemption, Suicidal Ideation, Trauma, Vomit, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21869554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsunsaint/pseuds/redsunsaint, https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchoil/pseuds/reyleaux
Summary: "All palaces are temporary palaces" - Jenny HolzerA portrait of Kylo Ren after the curtain falls on the second act.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren & Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren & Rey, Padmé Amidala & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Padmé Amidala & Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	Liar's Chair

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Collins English French Electronic Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers 2005:  
> Chair [ʃɛʀ]  
> nf  
> (d'un être vivant) flesh
> 
> This work picks up after the close of The Last Jedi. Please consult the tags for content warnings. In light of the events of Episode 9, the authors reiterate: although this work deals with dark themes, it is ultimately about self-reclamation as redemption. It will settle for nothing short of that.

In the middle of his first official address of the crew of the new flagship, Kylo Ren blinks.

He blinks and then there is Luke, across the bridge, watching. Thin and bluish and made of light. Kylo’s words die in his throat. 

He blinks again and there he is, still. _Still._

Kylo Ren used to be able to weather this—hold out the collapse until he was alone in his quarters or at least the damn elevator. 

Now he doubles over, still stranded in the middle of his sentence, and grips the banister before him. He looks away, shutting his eyes tight. Then back up.

He’s still there. Impassive, steady, slightly drawn. Even in death, Kylo thinks, he looks grieved. As though he has the _right_. 

_Get out_ , Kylo thinks. _Get out of this place, out of my head_.

Luke’s apparition makes to move across the bridge. The tension within Kylo Ren leaves his body like a bolt, twisting and bending the railing between his massive, fisted hands with a pulse in the Force. 

“ _Ben,_ ” Luke says, and Kylo can’t stand it, he cannot _fucking_ stand it. He doesn’t need another accuser now, someone else to hang on him like a pall, reminding him of his own weakness. 

Kylo’s lips tremble, forming themselves shakily around a single word. He recognizes the sound of it, held-back and nasal, hesitant. Like when he spoke with her. 

“No,” he says, a vain hope that it will help, that it will make Luke disappear. 

It doesn’t. 

“ _Yes,_ ” says the ghost. “ _No running this time. No more leaving things unfinished._ ”

He’s making good on his threat, Kylo thinks, dread sending alternating flashes of heat and chill through his body. He feels sick. 

“No,” he says again, voice already climbing to that irate and helpless register that tells him he’s about to do something he’ll be ashamed of. “NO!” 

Heads whip around across the bridge, apparently willing to ignore what was happening up until this point. 

The ghost is only a dozen feet away, now, half a level down on the main walk of the bridge. His face turns up to where Kylo stands on the mezzanine, so close that he can see him swallow, like he’s steeling himself. 

Kylo’s hand goes to his belt on instinct, but he cannot seem to grip his saber. He can’t even still the twitching of his face. 

Trying to hold onto his rage is like reaching out to grasp something with a newly-mended hand. The muscle is weak.

“ _I’m still here, Ben,_ ” Luke says, “ _just like I told you._ ”

“No,” Kylo says a final time, bringing his hands to cover his face. They’re shaking. 

“ _Always._ ” 

“I didn’t even do it,” he whines. He can hear his voice catch and clot, the voice of an uncovered throat, of a boy pretending to be a scholar, of a child bargaining with an illness he cannot sweat out. “I didn’t even strike you down. You wouldn’t let me.”

It’s grotesque, how this body always comes back under the control of a child lost in it. 

“You wouldn’t even let me.” He tries to shout it, but the phrase breaks all over his mouth, sharp and salty. 

A collection of short gasps filter over the bridge. 

“I take it the address is over, Supreme Leader?” 

Kylo blinks rapidly, looking up. He’s on the floor, he realizes. 

Hux is staring intently down at him, face frozen in an expression of disgust that Kylo recognizes as the momentary predecessor of a cold smile. When did he fall? How?

He doesn’t even have time to wonder in horror what he has done before an anonymous hand jams a hypo in his neck. 

\--

It feels like blinking, but he knows it’s not. 

Kylo comes to in an instant, body jolting in the grip of two of Hux’s personal guard. 

They’re dragging him down a hallway, arms looping painfully under his armpits and jostling him with each step. The guard to Kylo’s right coughs. Hux—walking in front of the three of them—pauses his conversation with the Sergeant that walks beside him to look back.

“Ah, he awakes at last. Delightful.” 

Kylo smacks his lips. “Put me down,” he tries to say. All that comes out is a slurring groan. 

“Careful, Ren,” Hux says, facing forward again, talking to Kylo without bothering to look at him, “wouldn’t want you to bite your tongue.” 

They deposit him in a medbay bed instead of his chambers, leaving him to lie on the papery sheets still fully dressed. 

“Fantastic job today,” Hux says, emphasizing the second syllable of _fantastic_ in a sharp, hissing way that reminds Kylo of an airlock depressurizing without his order. “You really seem to be taking your duty as Supreme Leader _so_ seriously.” 

Already eager to explain away the incident, Kylo fights for lucidity. He’s distantly hopeful that they’ll help him back to his quarters if he does. 

Hux’s eyes sweep over him, narrowing as they study Kylo’s face. “I can see you want to say something about this.”

He grinds his teeth and works his tongue against the roof of his mouth. His lips are numb and his mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. Spittle drips down the back of his throat and for a second he’s worried that maybe he _has_ bitten his tongue.

“Don’t bother trying.” 

A man—a nurse, Kylo realizes—enters the room, watching Hux intently as he circles around to Kylo’s side. 

Hux flicks a lashless look to the nurse and gives a nod. “Give him another, he’s done for today.” 

Kylo Ren reaches out clumsily in the Force as the nurse approaches from the side, just out of his reduced peripheral vision, shoving hard enough to send the man sprawling. Or so he hopes. He feels something connect and slide and– a metal tray, carrying a cold dinner ration, flies across the room. Food splatters against the wall. Kylo feels like screaming, irate and literally powerless.

Beneath the starched wool of his coat, Hux’s shoulders soften. Just a centimeter. It’s as much as Kylo has ever seen him relax. 

“Now,” Hux says, with a hitch in his voice that could be interpreted as a delighted thrill, “I would like to extend my thanks to you for today. Due to your obviously tenuous grasp on sanity, you’ve managed to do me something approaching a favor.” 

For the second time that day, Kylo Ren feels a cluster of two dozen microscopic needles perforate the skin of his neck. He takes a shuddering breath. 

Hux folds his hands behind his back and rolls his shoulders back up, momentary relaxation over. He sighs and the sound is somehow both stuttering and drawn out to Kylo’s ears. He can already feel consciousness slipping away. Hux’s voice reaches him like an alarm through thirty feet of water.

“I can only anticipate–” a strange shift in pitch, a momentary lack of sound, like a pause for breath in the air itself “–how many more you’ll do for me–” a slowing down, a darkening, Kylo’s eyes beginning to close without his consent “–before this is over.” 

  
  


\--

Slipping into awareness from a deep, dreamless dark, Kylo Ren struggles to rally his senses into order. The room is spinning, and an unnatural heaviness pins his body to the cot beneath him, as if he were waking on a high-grav planetary surface. Attempting to roll to his side and leverage himself up, he finds his body is sluggish and weak. He succeeds only in making it onto his side, and only after tremendous exertion. Breathing heavily from the effort, Kylo lies still and tries to quell his nausea. He grits his teeth and clutches, white-knuckled, at the edge of the cot as the last of the sedative cocktail burns its way through his system.

It seems to take hours.

What had first registered as the bland sterility of a medical chamber he soon realizes is one of the battle cruiser’s isolation cells, meant to hold powerful enemy combatants. Built into the belly of the cruiser, there is a layer of vacuum surrounding the exterior of each cell, a remotely activated airlock the only way in or out. The cell itself is bare except for the cot and a partitioned sanitation unit, every surface a perfectly uniform white. No way out till they come for him.

He could wait.

As the haze recedes from his mind, however, the blankness of the walls begins to press in. His heart rate struggles against the false calm of the sedatives, which threatens to give way to the underlying hum of panic reverberating through his nerves. Kylo tries to fix his mind to something solid, but it keeps slipping sideways, thoughts growing murkier and wilder. His vision has gone unfocused, the white fading into white, one long endless expanse of nothing.

The only sounds he can hear are those of his own body: the rush of blood past his ears, heartbeat, rustling of his restless hands on synthcloth, quickening breath. And something in his head like wind. Emptiness where there had once lain structure. Quiet, incomprehensible quiet.

He gasps in air like a drowning man, blunt fingernails scrabbling against the cot, his tunic, his skin. He means to rise, but his legs wobble beneath him and he ends up instead on his knees on the hard floor.

The smothering surge of his shame descends upon him. Where there had once been floodbanks, levees, there is now only soft earth. He bows forward, his forehead pressing into the cold tile. The shape of his master’s absence is a round hole made in stone, wind whistling over it. No voice left to fill his head except his own, the nasal whine of it.

And hers.

_Monster_ , her voice says. _Not even that; weak and pathetic,_ he adds. _Dragged around like a prized kitehawk by a bootlicker like Hux. Mewling. Freak_.

_Maker_ , he means to say. A plea, perhaps, or a surrender.

“ _Rey_ ,” is what escapes from between his lips, barely a breath. The tail of the word catches in his throat, becoming something wet, phlegmy.

He plays the sound of it over and over in his head, the only noise to keep him company as he waits.

\--

The hiss of the airlock rouses Kylo from somewhere deep within, the sound having arrived as if through water. He struggles upward toward it and blinks back into the white room in time to watch the door panel slide aside. A service droid scuttles in, bearing a small cafeteria tray laden with a modest selection of different protein mushes. It deposits the tray about a foot and a half from the door and then hastily retreats, beeping nervously to itself. The panel hisses shut behind it.

Kylo Ren stares at the place the door had been. The reality of the tray begins to sink in. He has no idea how long he’s been in this room. No idea how long he’s been out. Finding himself still on the floor, he rises unsteadily and tries to pace despite his protesting knees.

Hours tick past.

At a loss, he finally stills and sits on the cot, arms braced against his legs, staring at the floor.

His mind remains blessedly empty. He is filled only with a soft, rushing noise, like air succumbing to vacuum.

  
  


\--

  
  


After what Kylo Ren estimates is his third day in isolation, he has once again managed to fashion his weakness into something sharp and silver, needle-like. 

_Alone in the dark envelope of space, finger on the trigger, Leia watching him falter. Waking alone, supine in the rubble of the throne room, the bitter sting of rejection. Alone and scream-hoarse on the salt flats of Crait, thousands of eyes turned toward his foolishness. Alone afterwards, or not alone enough—the heady aura of Han thick and tender in the stale air of the mine._ Kylo Ren collects all of these things and sharpens them into shards of anger, shimmering hate. 

He tucks each of them away, stuck deep in his chest where he still sometimes pricks himself on them, the pain fresh and breathtaking each time. The sensation helps him focus against the way his mind still races in the oppressive quiet of the cell.

Kylo is ready now. When Hux finally comes to retrieve him, he will space the weasel himself.

For the third time, the wall gives way for the service droid. After depositing the tray, a small compartment opens from its surface and it ejects a tiny communiqué pod in Kylo’s general direction, trilling quietly in agitation before fleeing. The pod erupts into a crisp blue holo-projection.

Hux sneers at him, eyes landing on the wall somewhere over Kylo’s left shoulder. Pre-recorded.

“Well, now that you’ve had some time to calm down, allow me to catch you up on your… predicament,” he simpers. “Mm. Yes.” Hux rocks back on his heels, hands clasped behind his back, barely able to contain himself.

“Lucky for both of us, the First Order has an impeccably developed medical code that I intend to use to its fullest extent. Do you understand?”

Kylo Ren blinks.

Hux goes on, leaning into what is clearly a rehearsed speech.

“According to standing precedents, a petition for involuntary medical confinement may be lodged for hearing by any member of the Order on the behalf of any individual of equal or lesser rank. In the case of military commandants, however, the hearing process is necessarily expedited and subject to a lower threshold of scrutiny commensurate to the number of lives put at risk by an officer’s catastrophic failure. I suspect these are words that you already understand quite well, yes, ‘catastrophic failure’?”

Kylo can imagine him standing before a mirror in his undershirt and slacks, contorting his face around each word, perfecting his comically affected pronunciation.

“Such a petition shall be accepted without further inquiry provided that the acting medical officer is convinced that the person being confined evidences a substantial risk of serious harm to themselves or others, the restraint of which cannot be accomplished without detention.

“In case you’re wondering, and I don’t expect you to have the good sense to, risk of harm is demonstrated by one of two things: dangerous behavior or other evidence of severe emotional distress and deterioration of your mental condition.

“I suspect that you can understand, even in your current state, just how completely you fulfill these requirements, lofty though they may be. Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on this accomplishment.

“Now, during this time of confinement, where the throne of the supreme leadership is concerned, in the absence of a consort or other next of kin—that is, the kin you have so diligently murdered in pursuit of our goals—proxiship is assigned to the nearest non-subordinate officer. Being, however, that there exist no members of the First Order who are not your subordinates, that honor falls to me.”

Hux nearly croaks out the last few words, seeming not to have taken a breath since at least “next of kin,” too eager to finish to pause for it.

“It has been my advice that the confinement be marked as indefinite, but there will be an unavoidable parole assessment before the coronation so that you are able to make a public appearance.” 

Kylo Ren’s head swims. 

He’s not an idiot. He understands what’s happening, as little as he may want to. He knows the drone of legal language and the particular hidden sharpness of sentencing statutes. He heard enough of it growing up. It’s not that.

Rather there’s something about the air that feels...off. Even as he takes in lungfuls, it feels thin, like it’s not enough. 

“One last thing,” says the holo. Hux’s face is flushed and slightly plump after his performance. Sated, Kylo thinks. 

“Obviously, you won’t be staying here permanently. But I need to look out for the safety of our personnel while you’re being transferred and you’re a stars-blasted hazard. So don’t expect to be awake for the move.” 

_Ah_ , he thinks just before he blacks out. 

  
  


\--

  
  


From just below the surface of wakefulness, Kylo Ren does not recognize where he is. The chamber is far more expansive than his previous cell, but empty and dark. Someone’s bed—too small for _his_ body, certainly—juts out from a wall across from where he is positioned. There is a single porthole on the wall to his right, scarcely larger than both of his hands put side by side. It shows only a sliver of space. Two stars and an expanse of blackness between them that no doubt represents millions of miles of alienating vacuum but which strikes his half-conscious mind as quaint from this angle, a distance of courtesy.

A doorless entryway in the wall next to the bed leads to what must be a refresher. The curved doorport is flanked by the glossy panels of a recessed wardrobe where the officer who occupies these quarters keeps their general issue garments.

For these can only be the quarters of an officer, can’t they?

Kylo has been dumped in a chair beside a shockingly clean desk. Despite his lax muscles and general sluggishness, he concentrates to examine the two things sitting on the desk.

A holopad in the center, and up in the right-hand corner, something on a stand. Something decorative? He reaches out a clumsy arm and knocks the decoration over so that it rolls in a slow arc off of the desk and to the floor, stopping between his feet.

A stylus, but without the rounded plasticine tip. 

A pen.

His pen.

These _are_ his quarters. 

That bed _is_ certainly too small for his body, but it is the one where he curls up in the scant hours he forces himself to sleep. That is the single porthole he has ignored so resolutely that he may as well have erased it from his memory. There is the ‘fresher that’s always littered with the detritus of his injuries: thin red and viscous yellow fluids, smeared and drying on bandages—the only, and grossly out-of-date, medical tech his master allowed him for “minor” injuries. There, the nearly-empty wardrobe where endless copies and permutations of his garments wax and wane without his notice. 

And there, on the floor, the nibbed pen he keeps because he could use it if he wanted. And everywhere, the paper he doesn’t keep, so that he can’t use it even when he does want to.

A familiar cough draws Kylo’s eyes up from the pen. Inkless, abandoned thing.

“Finished with your reverie?”

Hair falls into his eyes as he swings his head up to meet Hux’s gaze. His vision swims.

“Sorry,” Kylo says, slow and slurred, but still noticeably sarcastic. “Not feeling well today. Wonder why.”

“I would say that’s fairly obvious, but I would appreciate if you could at least pretend to pay attention. We have business to attend to.”

_Business?_ Kylo thinks bitterly. _Now you want me to attend to business?_ But no. He doesn’t. That’s the point.

“In honor of your sudden but no doubt glorious ascendancy to the throne of the Supreme Leadership, the First Order will be organizing a grand Imperial coronation to cement your claim to the throne.”

Kylo shakes his head, fights off the momentary nausea it produces. “No.”

Hux scoffs as though reprimanding a child. “This is not a matter of choice, Ren.”

“No,” he says again, pushing the words through his teeth. “No pageant. No fucking crown.”

“All-powerful as you may think you now are, you don’t get to say no to this. It is written in the Imperial code and the notice has already been distributed. If you truly wanted to avoid this, you should have said something before the embassies and delegations were notified.”

“When?”

“Yesterday,” Hux says, then adds in the worst mockery of false sympathy Kylo has ever heard, “We held off as long as we could.”

The leather of his glove creaks as Kylo curls his hand into a fist. “You confined me. To a cell.”

“Perhaps you should have avoided being confined, then.”

Kylo Ren grunts, throwing his weight forward and up as if to rise from the chair. He wobbles on uncertain feet for two seconds. Three. He loses his balance, falling back again.

Hux sneers. “I think you ought to stay sitting.”

“When?”

“You’ll know when you need to.”

“ _When?_ ”

Hux barrels on, disregarding him. “However, there are a few matters left to attend to on which we’d like your...input.”

“You think you can ignore me?” It comes out weak and strangled, a little desperate, like he’s looking for validation instead of compliance.

Kylo digs deep, scraping around his abdomen for the pinpoint center where he can still, just barely, feel the Force burning. He recalls the image of Hux’s face mid-strangulation. Seeing that again could very well turn today around for him.

“The location for the coronation remains up for debate. With all the new territory, there are more options than the council could unanimously decide upon in one meeting. In the absence of their decision–” Kylo focuses on that skinny neck and _squeezes_ “–that duty falls to you.”

A moment of silence passes between them, Kylo Ren breathing hard in concentration. Hux barely quirks a brow as a hand flits up, halts, then drifts slowly back down to his side.

“I would prefer if you would stop trying to _caress_ me right now, Ren. It’s frightfully unprofessional.”

Every inch of Kylo Ren’s skin burns in a roaring hot flush of shame. _Pathetic_ he shouts at himself, a chorus of the same voice over and over and over itself.

“As for the matter of the location, we’ve prepared a short list.” Hux gestures to the holopad on the desk and before Kylo can decipher whether he’s really demanding that _he_ retrieve it for him, a ‘trooper’s arm reaches out from behind Kylo’s chair. It alarms him that he hadn’t noticed a person standing behind him—hadn’t noticed just how tenuous his grasp on the Force was.

Hux takes the pad from over Kylo Ren’s head with only slightly trembling fingers. 

“Our first thought was that you might have liked a Sith Temple, as we know there is one on Thule–”

“I have never been a lord of the Sith,” Kylo spits. “Idiot.” 

_Excellent_ , he thinks to himself as soon as he has said it, _absolutely not childish at all._

“–but such blatant attachment to religion is...less than ideal. Counter to our philosophy, in fact. So that was scratched.” 

Kylo butts his head against the back of his chair. Kriff, the man loves to hear himself talk. If Kylo is confined to this place and still too weak to walk away, the least Hux can do is not subject him to a slow replay of the meeting he has already admitted went nowhere.

“Given how much of our fleet has been built there and that it holds the businesses of many of our most prosperous advocates, Kuat was also considered. But the planet is largely industrial now and no suitable locations could be secured that could be adequately protected from the common garbage that fills the shipyards. And besides, many of our business partners spend the majority of their time at estates on Canto Bight.”

Kylo squeezes a fist once more and every muscle in his arm jumps at once. His shoulder cramps painfully. The muscle relaxers in the sedative must be wearing off but his body doesn’t particularly like it. Doesn’t want to go from lax to tightly coiled that fast. 

“But Canto Bight, of course, would be totally inappropriate. This isn’t some kind of _revel_ , it’s a symbol of our might and the hard-won successes of this war. So again, naturally, both were scratched from the list.

“Which leads me to Mandalore. An odd choice, yes, given its history, but our occupation has transformed it. The violence has been rather effectively quelled and the planet has once again become a _civilized_ place under human rule, as in its golden age. A sight to behold, really.”

Kylo misses the next few as the same spasms that began in his arm wrack his whole body, one limb at a time. Of course they didn’t check the interferences of the drugs they used on him, nor does he suspect did they check the dosages. To distract himself, he imagines Hux speaking with one of the med-techs, ordering _enough to fell a bantha. You’ve seen that monster, do you think the ‘average’ dose will keep him down? Are you willing to bet on it to transport him?_

He can imagine them talking about his body in these terms: mass, volume, disgust. 

“Of course,” he hears as the shaking in his legs goes down, “the natural deviation after the consideration of Coruscant—our top choice if there must be one—is Naboo.” 

Something in Kylo’s chest seizes, and he can’t tell if it’s the drugs working on his heart or– He makes a face like he’s been kicked and tries his best to ignore it.

“But alas, Naboo remains one of the few planets with enough legal and diplomatic infrastructure to have resisted coming entirely under our rule. So it stays off the table, barring an as-yet-unforeseen masterstroke of negotiation. Or a good carpet-bombing to the Lake Country. Only time will tell.” 

Kylo thinks Hux believes he is telling a joke. It lands about as well as sick on a mess hall floor.

And speaking of sick…

“Fine,” Kylo barks, “Coruscant, then. I couldn’t care less if it would make you leave.” 

“I’m sure the council will be beside themselves to hear your ringing endorsement.” 

_You asked_ , he wants to yell, but knows it will do him no good. He has already put his frustration on enough display. 

“Get out,” he says instead, rising shakily but managing it all the same. “I’m feeling less well by the second. Would hate to ruin your uniform.”

“Stop whining, we’re not finished.”

Kylo can feel his eyes go flinty as his stomach turns for the third time, the fourth. “Then _finish_ already.”

“While the coronation is a matter of cementing the _new_ order of things, there is a ritual of the old that we will be continuing in tandem.”

Kylo stares unblinkingly, thinking himself prepared for whatever inane task will follow. 

“We have commissioned a renowned artist, one of the last of his medium, to render a physical portrait in your likeness. The previous Supreme Leader had one of his own, a mark of his distinction among the great leaders of the galaxy and of his good taste.”

Kylo Ren knows of it. A grotesque excess depicting a grotesque man, hidden away from all but the eyes of Snoke himself and his other most precious possessions. Kylo Ren has, in fact, seen it. He also fucking hates it.

He grips the side of the desk so hard he is astounded it doesn’t crack. Tremors still run up his arm, but they are less than before. 

“I don’t care about his taste.”

“What you care about,” says Hux with the kind of glee Ren has only seen him exhibit in the act of killing millions, “doesn’t matter.” 

Using all of his strength, Kylo pushes outwards. With all of his being, he tries to slam Hux into the far wall. Usually it feels like a flick of the fingers, but now it’s like falling face first onto duracrete. 

Still, it works.

Hux goes flying with a startled howl and a satisfying _thunk_. 

Kylo Ren tries to enjoy the feeling. But then his knees hit the floor and his whole back is locking up in that horribly familiar way.

He vomits. The first retch is strong and half-solid, the half-digested protein slops of his last meal mixing together into one awful, gray paste. The second is weaker. By the fifth there is nothing but a thin, pink liquid. An acrid acid that burns every crevice of his throat and mouth separately. Then nothing. Just dry heaving as Hux crosses back over. 

Hux is probably bruised, Kylo thinks, but there’s no blood, no sick. To Kylo’s eye, he looks fine, not at all like he had just been thrown across a room. He cannot say the same for himself.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Hux says with a frown that would be comically deep if it didn’t set Kylo’s teeth on edge. “I hope you enjoy the alone time.” 

He and the ‘trooper take their leave, the door locking behind them with a bolt Kylo knows instinctively he won’t be able to bypass. 

  
  


\--

  
  


In the long, empty days that follow, Kylo is less surprised that Hux has made good on his promise of confinement than he is by his own acquiescence to it.

It feels like there was a fire in him, native to his body, that has gone out. He feels smothered by the host of objects that surround him. Shapes he remembers most clearly from when they appeared beside Rey’s impossible, intervening form.

Rey. She is a hole in his mind as much as a memory. Kylo doesn’t know how to manage it. Without his master, even the feverish need to _hide_ her is gone. And in its absence, _her_ absence only grows.

Instead of extra energy, he’s left with space. More than he has ever had, more than he knows what to do with.

So he goes backwards. Over and over in a choreographed spiral. Back to the throne room of the _Supremacy_ —every throne room his master has ever occupied, but especially that one.

The memory comes easily now. It ripples through him in starts and stops. Words layer over each other. Rey’s frightened face, her gritted teeth, and her wide eyes collapse together into a fluttering impression, and he fixes his gaze to it so as not to lose his nerve, smooths his mind out into blankness.

“...And now, foolish child, he ignites it, and _kills_ his true enemy!” Snoke crows in triumph.

Kylo’s fingers snap back into a fist, and the agitated shriek of Rey’s lightsaber fills the cavernous hall.

The roar in his head is deafening, and Rey is falling backward, limp, but as he summons her blade, she reforms before him, bathed in blue light and rising to meet his eyes.

His ears are still ringing and a metallic taste has flooded his mouth, leaving his molars vibrating as he struggles to orient himself. The seizing uncertainty of her hope is the center of it all. He pivots around it, teeth bared and blade crackling, as hellfire rains down.

But this heady certainty soon runs dry, and his hand, outstretched once more, remains empty, grasping, as she backs away from him. Her tear-stained face is an accusation.

_Rey_. _I don’t know what to do._

His supplication lands dull and heavy in the space between memory and his immediate consciousness. There had been a soft space somewhere in there, a membrane, where such words could slip through and find their way to her. He is now met only with overwhelming silence. His head is, perhaps, as empty as it has ever been.

Again. He sinks back into the memory.

The room is dark, save for the fires scattered around them. Kylo approaches the stillness of the dias, the crumpled mess of his master’s body. His nerves are still sparking from the fight, but the roaring vacuum in his head is a cliff he has only just noticed himself to have walked off of. He reaches, reaches— 

“Ben?” Her voice cuts through his thoughts and he realizes she has been saying something to him.

“It’s time to let old things die. Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels, let it all die,” he hears himself say. 

Her eyes track him.

“Rey. I want you to join me. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy.” 

“Don’t do this, Ben.” Pity stretches across her face, flushes her eyes. Disappointment. Fear. “Please don’t go this way.”

“No, no. You’re still holding on! Let go!” The words sound childlike now. His empty hand is still outstretched and grasping.

In truth, he hadn’t planned for any of this. He had no grand vision. He had _nothing_ to offer her but a fleeting, juvenile fantasy that had brought him some brief amount of comfort.

He has the bloodline and the power to reshape the galaxy and yet had no vision, no convictions, no drive. He is wet, yielding; he is no Vader. Just a dog cut loose from his lead.

Again, further back this time.

He is on his knees once more, his weight shifted back toward his heels, where he will be able to sustain the pose for longer without distraction.

Vast, shapeless red surrounds him, and people are talking somewhere, but Kylo stays here in the quiet of his body.

  
  


\--

  
  


On the seventh day, Kylo Ren can sense something nearby as he wakes. Someone or something already in the room, living and aware enough that it rubs a little raw at the edges of his mind. He is panicking before he can think, as with all panics.

He turns in his bed to find a shadow looming over him. Hux. 

At first he thinks he must be having a nightmare. This is a manifestation of his madness, brought on by isolation and the lingering effect of whatever heinous cocktail of drugs they pumped into his system. 

But then he blinks. He jerks his arm over and feels it land heavily on his chest. He’s awake, certainly he’s awake. And Hux is still there, not three feet from his bed, staring down, looking perfectly unruffled and at peace.

Kylo can feel that he isn’t even afraid. He is...calm. As a reactor core running on time. Shockingly stable. 

Though he knows there’s no reason to be, Kylo feels sick all over again, like the last time he saw Hux. The thought flashes across his mind that he is paying for his weak attack that day, that this is the first comeuppance in a series of comeuppances that he will have no control over. 

The worst part is the familiarity of the feeling, and the realization that there is already a corner of him formed perfectly to hold it. Like the well of his pen-stand was made to hold his pen, he has a place inside himself to hold a future filled with humiliation. 

“Good morning,” Hux says, stealing a look at his chrono. 

Kylo Ren looks around for his own but notices that it has been confiscated from his quarters. He wonders if it was there the last time Hux came in, or if it was taken out today, this morning, in the minutes before this rude awakening. 

“Get up. There’s something I neglected to talk with you about during my last visit.” 

“Then send a droid,” Kylo shoots back groggily. “I don’t want you to be the first thing I see when I wake.” 

“I wasn’t anticipating that news of the portrait would be so distressing for you. I would prefer not to have to arrange my conversations with you around the possibility of a tantrum, but if I must I will.” 

Kylo swings his legs over the edge of his bed, letting his feet hit Hux’s shins in an effort to drive him back. He could have risen from the other side of the cot, but the thought of giving Hux his back is less than appealing. 

“In addition to the portrait, you have a crucial duty to attend to for the coronation ceremony itself.” 

“Oh?” Ren says, picking at his nails and failing to stifle a yawn. It’s an elaborate show, but he hopes against hope that it wounds Hux to see him unaffected by his sudden appearance. 

“Your first act as crowned Supreme Leader will be to deliver an address to the assembled dignitaries regarding your ascendancy and plans. It should be celebratory but not flashy or mushy; it should be aspirational but not give away crucial details—not that you would know any; it should be substantial but not long-winded. And it should be a bit...elevated from your usual voice.” 

Instantly, Kylo knows he has no intention whatsoever of writing this speech. 

“If I agree will you leave my chambers?”

“Of course, Supreme Leader.”

“Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“Don’t test my patience, General.”

“Grand Marshal,” Hux says, finally shooting a glance back down to Kylo.

“What?”

“My title. It’s Grand Marshal. Not General.”

“Force me to ask you to leave again and I will decommission you at the first opportunity.” 

“Hm,” Hux hums, a smug smile stretching out slowly across his features, “I’m afraid to say, you may now find such opportunities to be in short supply.”

As Hux turns to leave, a desperate, half-formed thought clutches at Kylo and is out of his mouth before he can quash it down.

“The portrait… I’ll do it. But only so long as I’m allowed free access to the throne room.” As his words cut through the air, Kylo struggles to school his features into a scowl but it’s already too late. The posturing has slipped, an irrecoverable concession.

Hux stops, considering him measuredly, then turns once more to leave, his the purposeful steps of a man with countless other duties to attend to.

Once the door to his chamber has sealed shut behind the aide, Kylo launches his pillow forcefully across the room, and as his other hand gets caught in the blankets, he wrenches those up from around him as well and drives them down onto the floor with a soft and unsatisfying _whump_. Once again, his labored breathing is the only sound left to keep the silence at bay.

  
  


\--

He’s on his knees again, staring down at a glassy black expanse. His inky reflection stares back. Voices filter in distantly, the words still indistinct, but he keeps his head bowed. There is comfort, here, in acquiescence.

“...worthy apprentice, son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vader.” 

Kylo Ren looks up. At the other end of the pool of black, Snoke rises above him, grimacing down from his throne. Kylo absently registers that something is different. He’s gone through this memory more times than he can count, nearly lost in the lull of it.

“Where there was conflict, I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness, strength.”

The space lightens, glows ember-hot, until the flushed walls of the throne room fill in around him. It is fear that he lacks this time, he realizes. The hot dread coiled up tight in his muscles, in the bottom of his stomach. The nervous flush at the back of his neck, sweat beading at his temples. The slight tremor in his hand.

It’s not truly gone, just somewhere else. In a different version of this room, in a different part of his mind, still playing out behind a closed door. Now, here, in its absence, he is only tired.

“Complete your training, and fulfill your destiny,” Snoke hisses.

In this newfound stillness, Kylo feels the years piled on thick, a leaden pall. Each ghastly second of his own life has grown bloated and heavy, and more years besides. Call them his inheritance.

Call them Skywalker.

He is meant to rise now— _I know what I have to do_ _—_ but, _Rey_ , he doesn’t have the strength. As if his muscles have wasted away to nothing, finally giving way to atrophy after all the time he’s spent here on his knees, waiting.

He’s done it so many times already. _Please_. To stay still a moment longer. To stay here, closer to the ground, disintegrating slowly into the timeless black of it. Losing his shape, softly. A sigh of relief. The quiet huff of a candle extinguishing.

His body rises against his will, for it knows no alternative. It knows nothing of the arcane art of unbecoming.

The ancient Sith drama unfolds once more.

  
  


\--

  
  


The space of his quarters is luxuriously sized for any military transport, respectably sized for command rank. Still, it is far too small to allow for him to train properly while confined. Nevertheless, Kylo Ren is attempting to do just that.

It had started as just a seed of an idea, the humiliation of his previous attempt at insubordination growing into a desperate need to grow stronger, fortify his body against his enemies which now encircle him. _Run_ , a small voice insists, _you could make it_. He knows the layout of the destroyer well enough, knows the imprint the troopers leave in the Force even better, and he could probably make it as far as the engineering deck before ever even being forced into combat. Then things might get violent.

By then, the response from security will have shut down most traffic through the ship, leaving him the single option of fighting his way through the ranks and attempting manual overrides as he goes. And he may know a thing or two, but he isn’t exactly a tech and First Order security systems are top of the line in defensive programming.

So he would have to grab an engineer along the way. But that would complicate things. A droid would never break protocol. A human could be intimidated, but a human could also get killed. And having an extra person to keep alive would be a dangerous distraction, especially in the case of an uncooperative person.

Kylo eases out of the kata form he had been holding for the past several minutes, letting out a frustrated huff, and with it, the daydream vanishes.

Entertaining the idea is ridiculous in its indulgence—the kind of scenario he never would have been allowed to imagine before killing Snoke. It strikes him like a rich food, sweet and satisfying. Instantly, he feels ashamed.

_Stupid_ , he tells himself. _You wouldn’t even get past Hux and his security detail_. _So weak now. Pitiful_.

Although his muscles are starting to shake gently in warning, he moves into the next form. There is only a faint click to forewarn the arrival of someone, and then the door to his chamber is sliding open and Hux is striding through into his space.

Kylo fights the instinctive urge to cover his body, having removed his shirt after he began sweating into it.

“Ah, there you are,” Hux says impatiently, as if there were anywhere else he could have been. “The artisan has arrived. He’s setting up his things now.”

Hux pauses, looking Kylo up and down like a poorly-formed piece of dishware. 

“Try to do something about all this,” he continues, gesturing vaguely in Kylo’s direction, then towards the ‘fresher. Not waiting for Kylo’s response, he turns to an attendant that had followed him in, her arms laden with garment bags.

The attendant scurries past to lay out the parcels on his bed, and as Hux turns and sees him still standing there, he huffs.

“Yes, yes, I’ve seen to it that you can access the throne room. Mind you, these will be escorted excursions. There. Are you satisfied? Are you ready to see to the responsibilities of your station now? Or would you prefer to throw another tantrum?”

Kylo hesitates, then turns toward the ‘fresher, his nerves an anxious buzz loud enough to drown out the thoughts of resistance which had, in his solitude, been much more pressing. He showers quickly and then lets himself be dressed in the dark silk and fine wool pieces Hux has selected. Beneath a slight chill, his body moves sluggishly as the attendant jostles him with her efforts. His mind is somewhere very far away, watching.

Hux, who has been sitting behind Kylo’s desk going over something on his holopad, looks up as the attendant steps away.

“That will do. I knew I could clean you up if I had to. Can't be trusted to take care of yourself, but serviceable in dress blacks." Hux stands and circles Kylo slowly. “The silver?”

“Yes, Grand Marshall,” the attendant replies, turning to a black case on the bed that Kylo hadn’t even noticed. She withdraws from it a large, ornamental piece and, approaching Kylo, clips the chains onto his shoulders and collar, draping the cool weight of it onto his breast.

“Let’s get going, shall we? I do have things to do besides tending to you.”

  
  


\--

  
  


The painter is set up in an empty conference room cleared specifically for this purpose. His tools look alien in the space, hand-worn and organic in nature and shape. He must have studied somewhere rural, learned to make his brushes himself from wood and bone and hair. He must have learned to paint in the open air. The thought enrages Kylo all over again.

He is told to stand on a block set out before the painter and instructed—meticulously—on how to pose his body. Hux’s quiet but sharp commentary is too much, bringing an uncomfortable, itching feeling to the muscles of Kylo’s neck. He hunches up in protest, trying to find where the discomfort wants his body to move. Eventually Hux gives up on placing him.

Kylo and the painter are left alone, in total silence, the painter’s eyes passing over Kylo with a shocking flat efficiency as he sketches. He can see himself being looked at but not seen. The tension in his shoulders starts to loosen. 

He stands for six hours, until he’s exhausted and the painter packs up abruptly. No guards have arrived for Kylo yet and a small part of him swells to think that they have left him to return alone. But then the painter opens the door, and there they are, an attache of ‘troopers standing outside to guard the door. 

_Of course_ , he thinks, _always waiting just outside._

  
  


\--

  
  


The following morning, he wakes to a familiar shadow and a familiar smell of aftershave. His heart leaps in anxious shock. 

There is Hux again, looming over him. He tilts his head to the side, eyes slow-blinking and relaxed. His ease makes Kylo’s stomach twist.

Groggily, he protests with the same futile words as last time, as every time. 

“Get out.” 

He can’t remember a time he’s bothered to say it so much, but he can remember that it’s never worked. All his life, that’s never worked. 

Hux’s response is distant, indifferent. “Of course, Supreme Leader. Whatever you say.” 

Hux retreats and his attendants take his place. They dress him in the same starchy robes and heavy chains as before and take him to the same featureless room where they place him on the block and tell him to stand and wait. 

Kylo learns to stand with his back uncomfortably straight, watching the methodical movements of the painter, the slow play of concentration and frustration and satisfaction moving across his face.

Kylo becomes comfortable under his studious but empty gaze. 

For the most part, he doesn’t even notice it. 

Instead, he focuses on a building pressure behind him. He imagines the outline of his uncle standing there, burning a hole into the back of his head. He imagines that hole opening up, letting his mind spill out. 

He waits until his body aches and then they tell him to leave and the countdown begins again. 

Supper, then sleep. 

Then Hux, looming. The attendants, grasping. Kylo, waiting.

So goes the next morning, and the next. 

At first it agitates Kylo to think that he has been so unaware. He isn’t a heavy sleeper. Nor is he indifferent to the prospect of someone entering his room unannounced. He wonders angrily if he’s gotten lazy, assumes that it’s because he hasn’t been able to return from the edge of his breakdown on the bridge. He thinks the word _failure_ over and over, flavored by a change in tone depending on the time and day. 

Ready to be finished with the aggravating ritual, he refuses to sleep. Or tries. Three nights in a row, he sits up, placing himself in his chair before his desk with a holopad. He reads over the same comms again and again, trying to memorize them in the absence of any other activity. He looks to the pen from time to time, but his initial dilemma remains. No paper. Probably no ink either, he thinks.

But each night he still falls asleep. And in the mornings, he wakes on his back in his bed. Sometimes he lays under his covers, sometimes he doesn’t. He never remembers walking to the bed or lying down. 

Eventually, Kylo stops being angry. Instead he becomes unnerved. It’s not a feeling he’s had in a very long time. 

When he wakes, Hux towers over him as he is only able to do when Kylo is asleep. Or drugged, he thinks. Or both.

And it’s like an engine flicking off—the distracted hum clearing momentarily so that Kylo can hear the tell-tale clanking of a busted compressor beneath. He’s being drugged. Every night. That’s why he can’t stay awake. 

The thought fills him with so much rage he has to fight the urge to spit in Hux’s pale, rubbery face. 

From then on, he can’t make himself eat his dinner, so great is his disgust. 

_And,_ a voice whispers from somewhere down below, _your fear_. 

He disposes of the meals as inconspicuously as he can, flushing them away in the ‘fresher lest someone be checking his plates after the service droid takes them away. 

It makes him wobbly on the block where his feet must stay parallel and close together, but it hardly matters now since today is meant to be the last session. 

Near the end, Hux comes in to examine the painter’s work, but Kylo is elsewhere, the inside of his head a rushing tunnel. He imagines wind to keep from imagining his uncle, but it makes him imagine him anyways, and the island where Rey was with him. His gut clenches in response and he feels his tongue shake in his mouth. He imagines more wind, he imagines it louder. 

This is why he doesn’t notice Hux’s tantrum until he is yelling, or so he tells himself. 

_“It’s abhorrent!”_

“Grand Marshall, I’ve merely done what–”

“You think we’ll have _this_ piece of garbage hanging in the Imperial vault to commemorate our final mastery over the galaxy? _This?!_ ”

“I have taken license with some of the background details, but the portrait is perfectly accurate. This is my vision as I described it to you–”

“I AM NOT PAYING YOU FOR YOUR VISION!”

The painter’s eyes go very wide. He seems to stop breathing.

Hux is so red he seems to be glowing, two pieces of hair falling into his eyes as he bristles, shoulders climbing towards his ears. 

“You will destroy it,” Hux says in the midst of recomposing himself. “You will start over and no one will be permitted to see this– this thing. It’s an insult to the Supreme Leader, to the Order.” 

  
  


\--

  
  


It is a small mercy that Hux has stopped accompanying the service droid in with his meals or insisted on joining him for his dinner. This evening, though, he does.

“Your door has been reprogrammed,” Hux says dryly, the last word turning in his mouth like the plasticine cover of a waste receptacle. Flapping over the ‘R’s. 

Kylo stares down at the full plate left on his desk and his stomach growls. Hux’s pale brows lift at the apparently audible gurgle, but Kylo is hungry enough that he doesn’t care. Something in his chest clenches, as he can’t help but think of Rey.

“You’ll be given the time of day when it will be open on the morning of, and allowed out at that time. You’ll be accompanied–”

“You’re insane if you think that–”

“On the _contrary_ , Ren.”

Kylo’s eyes flicker up to Hux’s where he stands, a single pale brow raised haughtily. He doesn’t say it, but lets it sink in. _On the contrary, Ren, you’re the one classified insane by the Imperial Code._

And he doesn’t have to say it. Kylo knows it. By the way he throws out his dinners every night in secret, like maybe he’s being watched, like he knows he’s being drugged. (And _isn’t_ he? Doesn’t he know?) By the way he spends every day more of his waking hours talking to himself, pretending that he’s talking to Rey in the space where the Maker is supposed to be. The way that, without the sedatives, he couldn’t fall asleep on his bed last week and slept on the floor instead. The way the floor has become more comfortable since, the only place he wants to sleep at all. The way he’s started picking up the pen and holding it between his fingers like a forgotten body part, started moving it in familiar but shaky strokes, drawing nothing. Still no ink. Still no paper. 

He is. He is the one who’s gone insane. 

All the same, he doesn’t eat that night. At least he’ll have that much: an ache in his stomach where his courage, shrunken and pathetic, still resides. And he’ll wake up before Hux comes in. He’ll crawl to his bed and pretend to be asleep, a game as familiar as anything, as easy as kneeling at Snoke’s feet. 

  
  


\--

  
  


Stepping into the room, he cannot believe how much it is the same. And how much it is different. 

He imagines that some tether between him and the past is cut as the door hisses shut behind him. The chain between him and it evaporating into the air. 

This is not the memory tied by a string to the past. This is the past. 

The walls are smooth and opaque red, circular but somehow fathomless. Textureless. It is impossible to tell exactly where they begin, how far away from him or how close. He remembers this from last time—from every time that led up to last time. 

But at the same time…

There are no guards. No statuesque figures standing around him at the ready, weapons waiting to be ignited at the slightest sign of insubordination. Not that they had been necessary until after, when they were altogether useless. 

Most jarring, though, is what sits at the center of the dais. The throne. Empty.

Or perhaps not empty, Kylo thinks, eyeing it from just three steps beyond the entrance. He occupies it now. 

The thought churns in him, alien and wrong. He knows this is what he chose—has known it since the first tear broke her eye as he asked her to join him—but it doesn’t make sense.

Instead, he thinks of kneeling. He thinks of playing through the fantasy again. Maybe this time—

But flicking his eyes to the empty throne, a tightness in his throat solidifies. The throne seems to rise up before him, filling his vision. He can’t. Not right now. 

Kylo Ren turns and, like the weak-willed thing he has become since his master’s death, he flees back to his chambers. Back to the prison from which this was meant to be an escape.

It is easier not to eat that night than he expected. 

Consciously, he knows that he should crave the nutrients he’s missing in his morning and afternoon meals. Should crave the physical comfort of it, hot and solid before him, something with which he can interact without arguing, and without feeling the shameful itch to prove himself. 

Instead, the feeling in him when he turns the service droid away saying he doesn’t feel well is _electric_. 

It nearly makes up for the tight, knotted feeling left in his gut after visiting the room. 

  
  


\--

  
  


He tries again. 

What he sees in the room is the same as the first time, in slightly lower light. 

It is dark enough that if he squints, he can imagine his master still sitting on the throne. If he clenches his jaw and lets the blood run to his ears, he can imagine that the sound is his master drawing a wheezing breath before some ordinary praise or ordinary excoriation. 

It is more comforting than he is willing to admit, than he is comfortable with. 

He cannot tell if he is more afraid of the spectre he imagines or its absence. He is not comfortable with that uncertainty, either. 

The ‘troopers startle as he strides past them and straight towards the door. 

When he palms it, it doesn’t open. He wants to _scream_. He wants to unclip his saber and use it to _destroy_ the door, raining molten metal and sparks of plasma down on his hair and face in the process. It’s been so long since he’s done that, he thinks, since he let go. 

But he thinks of the drugged food, Hux’s shadow falling across his face. He knows there are less subtle and less...preventable ways to drug him. There are worse things than that shadow. 

“Open it,” he says, voice sharp, eyes closed. A shiver of revulsion flows through him at the sound of himself _requesting_ , but he shoves it down. Chastises himself for needing to. He’s out of practice. 

  
  


\--

  
  


Hux sits across from him and the plate of rations set out before him, tapping at his holopad with affected focus. The pale, lumpy paste on his plate and Hux’s complexion are both set in relief to the dark backdrop of the chamber, becoming a mirror image to Kylo Ren’s increasingly unfocused eyes.

Hux snorts.

“Mind that you don’t pass out on your plate, will you?”

Kylo leans back into his chair, crosses his arms.

“To what do I owe the intrusion?”  
  


“Yes, let’s get right into it, shall we?” Hux sets down the holopad and turns his attention to Kylo. “As you may recall, you failed to offer anything of substance to the deliberations over where the ceremony will be held. As such, the council has taken up the burden once more, and has reached a near-unanimous decision, as difficult as that may be to believe. They’re quite certain it will please you as well. And so I’m happy to say that we’re right on track with the planning. In fact–”

“Where?” He had not intended to respond so reflexively to the prodding and swallows a grimace.

“–we should be entering the system in about 10 days. I trust the speech is coming along nicely. It’s not as if you have any other responsibilities.” Hux continues as if he had not spoken.

“Meanwhile some of us are waging a war, you know.” Hux isn’t looking at him, returning his attention instead to his holopad; he may as well not even be speaking to him. “If there’s anything that Crait taught us, it’s that military command is not exactly your forte. No, you were a bit better suited to your role as the Supreme Leader’s attack dog.”

It is fairly easy to tune out the drone of Hux’s words thanks to a mounting pressure in his temples. Dehydration, Kylo notes, and the tension that lives in the hinge of his jaw and snakes upward.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that having, in your supreme wisdom, ceded command to myself and the council, you have already brought great victories to the First Order. Our territorial holdings have expanded by fifteen percent this quarter–”

“Couldn’t you have sent me a fucking report?” Kylo interrupts.

“Well, I could have, but I know you don’t have a keen sense for the business of war, and the report sent to our partners and stakeholders would have likely set your head spinning. Now, as I was saying—”

Kylo Ren retreats once more to the Red Room. It is quiet, nearly silent. The sounds around him are just suggestions of voices, words garbled into a low murmur. He kneels. 

In slow motion, Rey rushes the dias, straight into Snoke’s grasp. The bodyguards circle the room, indifferent to the drama before them. Kylo envies them.

But then, as Rey is caught and suspended in the air before him, the fear and pain in her cry slides through the hush blanketing his mind, a jagged sliver burrowing into him.

A part of him tries to react, wants to leap up and scream and _move_ , but Kylo catches it, a deadly misstep, and smothers it with all his strength. He will stay still. He will stay silent—

“–barely even had to put troops on the ground on Naboo before their diplomatic core caved to pressure from–”

The words slice through Kylo Ren’s imaginings.

“You…”

“...Ah. Oops. That was meant to be a surprise.” Hux looks genuinely chagrined, having no doubt concocted a much more elaborate way to drop this revelation on Kylo.

He seems to recover quickly.

“Yes, the coronation will be held on Naboo after all. What a lovely twist of luck for us, hm? Just imagine, Theed Palace adorned in the Order’s colors. It will be splendid, a sight to behold. 

“And we truly couldn’t have done it without your… guidance, Supreme Leader. As I was saying, it was largely due to the reputation that you and your knights have forged for us over the years that we were able to take the planet with only a minimal show of force on the ground. After a heavy artillery barrage, of course.” 

Meanwhile, the bottom has dropped out of Kylo’s stomach. Naboo is under occupation. 

Kylo Ren has never even entered the Chommell Sector; neither had Ben Solo, to his knowledge, though the Organas had travelled extensively. And yet, this news has him stricken.

He recalls, finally, that in the course of his studies under his master’s tutelage, he had started digging into the historical records of Lord Vader. His efforts hadn’t lasted very long; Snoke had snuffed them out as soon as he discerned what Kylo was doing. But Kylo had, in the meantime, unearthed primary documents that mentioned a woman from Naboo who was described as Darth Vader’s lover. Or former lover. The accounts had been a bit ambiguous, mired in ideology and innuendo. He had searched his memory for any story that Luke or Leia had told of his grandmother, but there were none to be found. This must have been her. Anyway, he had no way of knowing.

\--

It is not long after that Hux takes his leave to tend to whatever matters of state he’s assigned himself.

Kylo, however, has not moved an inch from his seat. His head is still spinning. _Naboo is under occupation_ , he thinks once more. 

Naboo is under occupation.

The revulsion he feels is overwhelming and unfamiliar; it heightens his sense of vertigo.

This is grief, he realizes.

And, like an airlock repressurising, the world comes rushing back to him. The world beyond this empty room, that is. The troops marching through the streets of Theed, through Chandrila, which was overrun last cycle, across the face of Kashyyyk, its great wroshyr forests blazing. Kylo remembers seeing that report come through a few months ago.

And here he sits, alone in a small, grey room. The lightsaber clipped to his belt feels like no more than a cheap toy in the face of the towering, fearsome war machine of the First Order. The death of Snoke had done little to derail its course, and clearly it is just as indifferent to him.

He lets the thought sink in as he considers the plate of mush in front of him, laden with a careful cocktail of sedatives.

Kylo Ren has no appetite to speak of. Even less so when he registers the smell that has, almost imperceptibly, diffused through the room. Worn leather; fatherhood.

At the bottom of this well of shame, there is something waiting for him, waiting to be uncovered.

It will have to keep waiting, he decides. Kylo Ren picks up his fork and eats his dinner.


End file.
